Project Identification, Selection and Definition
Domain 2 tests whether you can turn a vague complaint into a charter a team can execute. Questions probe problem-statement quality, scope boundaries, voice-of-the-customer translation and whether a candidate project deserves selection at all.
Charter content
- Business case: the link to strategy, the customer and the cost of poor quality (COPQ).
- Problem statement: what, where, when and how much, measured against a requirement; no cause, no solution, no blame.
- Goal statement: SMART, expressing the gap to close and the metric that proves it.
- Scope: in-scope and out-of-scope, with process start and stop points agreed through a SIPOC.
- Team: sponsor, process owner, Green Belt, subject-matter experts and a RACI; milestones and tollgates.
Selection and voice of the customer
- Screen candidates on strategic fit, COPQ and financial benefit, data availability, whether the team controls the process, and a scope finishable in roughly six months.
- Tools: Pareto of defects or cost, impact/effort matrix, weighted prioritization matrix.
- VOC becomes CTQs through a CTQ tree; Kano separates must-be, performance and delighter needs, and each CTQ is translated into a measurable specification.
Worked example
Draft charter: "Operators are careless, so invoices are late; install an automated workflow." Rewrite: "In Q1 2024, 216 of 1,200 invoices (18%) were issued more than 5 business days after service completion, against a customer requirement of 3 days, causing $54,000 in late-payment penalties." The rewrite is measurable, names no cause, proposes no solution, and states the financial stake the sponsor will judge the project on.
Traps that cost marks
A solution smuggled into the problem statement; scope creep; soft savings presented as hard; no baseline data; excluding the process owner; choosing a project whose Xs the team cannot change.